


A Liar's Guide to Love and Dimensional Travel

by skyholdherbalist



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Attempt at Humor, But Still Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Dimension Travel, F/M, Gen, Lucid Dreaming, Mad Science, Modern Girl in Thedas, Not Canon Compliant, Plagiarism, Writers Are Weird, bad guitar playing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-04 22:07:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17312711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skyholdherbalist/pseuds/skyholdherbalist
Summary: When a writer's DIY time travel plans fail (hate when that happens) and she faceplants into another dimension—one rife with dangerous magic, brooding romantic heroes, and a painful lack of coffee—what's a girl to do?1. Try not to die.2. Lie her ass off.3. Make the most of it.As told to renowned author Varric Tethras.





	1. Chapter 1

All I can honestly say is... I didn't mean for any of this to happen.

I wanted to do a little harmless research.  Just hop backward in time, take a look around, and hop back.

Somehow I ended up in another world, full of magic and demons and war.  Somehow I didn't die, and I even became kind of famous.  Somehow I fell in love.  That last bit is the one that strains credulity, I know, but it's true.

And you want the story from the beginning.  I can do that.  Telling stories used to be my thing.

 ***

There's a famous quote from my world: _She is too fond of books and it has turned her brain._   That happened to me.  Whatever mind I had, I lost it.  Writing made me crazy.  Not enough sleep, too much coffee, radiation poisoning from too many microwave burritos—something must have changed me.

Once upon a time I, Allison Alesbrook, was an admittedly eccentric but otherwise average writer, working hard at a book which never seemed to be finished.  Despite my best, and worst, efforts.  By the look on your face, you know what I mean.  _(Editor's note: Unfortunately, I do.)_   But I truly loved my characters and the story I was creating, so I stuck with them, even when it hurt.  

My book was an historical work, set in a time period a thousand years before the one I lived in, which we called the Middle Ages.  The specific era I researched was the early Carolingian Renaissance, which was a intense flowering of artistry and education within the—

Fine, you don't care about that.  I can see your eyes glazing over.  What's important is how obsessed I became with my writing and research.  Obsessed with the fictional world I created, with its people, to the exclusion of everything else.  I did endless research, writing to historians, visiting reenactors.  I wanted to get as close to the real thing as I possibly could.  That extended to wearing the clothes they would have worn, eating the food they might have eaten.

Sure, the fact I did all this in 21st-century apartment building with running water and internet access gave me a little cognitive dissonance.  But I did my best.  I wanted to live as my characters did.  Because I loved them so much, I wanted everything I wrote to be perfect.

Even with all my efforts, I knew something was missing.  I would never be able to smell the market road strewn with hay and horseshit, to taste game charred over an open flame at the hunter's camp, to feel the lumps and scratches as I lay in my straw bed.  I would never know what any of it was really like, unless I did something drastic.  Something completely unprecedented, and possibly insane.

But you're a writer, too.  Wouldn't you do anything to get your story right?

Okay, maybe you wouldn't do what I did.

What do you mean, _did I not have a life?_   Of course I did.  I know it sounds as though I did nothing but write, and think about writing, and obsess over my writing.  But—

Well, to be honest with you... that is all I did.  It's not pretty, but it's true.  I had a sixth-floor walkup apartment, and a few overwatered plants, and not much else.  My mother called me every week to make sure I was alive, and I had one friend who still kept in touch me.  Though not very often.  I'd gone through a nasty breakup a while back, which kind of ruined my life.  Then I lost my job, which somehow ruined it further, and I didn't think that was possible.

So, no, I didn't have a life.  I had my book.  I thought if I could just get things perfect, and finish it, I could fix myself.  I could have one thing that was right in the world.

In _that_ world, I guess.  Before I ended up in this one.

Ever heard of lucid dreaming?  Right, dwarves don't dream.  I forgot.

Well, some of us, when we're dreaming, can _control_ the dream, instead of it simply happening to us.  You're aware that you're dreaming.  There are some people who say they can travel in these dreams, projecting themselves to other locations, while physically in their beds. It feels as real as waking life.  So they say.

There are even those who claim they've traveled through time in these dreams, altered reality and seen things they never could in waking life.  Most of us refer to people who say that as "one sandwich short of a picnic."  I might have, if it didn't sound so appealing to me then.  I would never say that now.  People here do that kind of dream-traveling with ease, apparently.

You see where this is going.  I wanted to see if it was real.  If it could actually be done.  So I made a plan.

There are these little devices, "dream machines."  Basically a large, flat piece of paper or metal made into a cylinder, and cut with holes and slits all around.  The cylinder sits around a light, and underneath the light is a turntable.  What's a turntable? Well, it's—it's a table that turns on its own, that's all you need to know.

The turntable spins, the light is blocked by the cylinder, except where the holes are, and it flickers through.  The flashing, flickering light passes over your closed eyes, and your brain begins to... drift.  You dream, but you're awake.  Sights, smells, tastes, movement, it all feels real.  If you fell asleep doing this, you could extend the dream, and move through it.  Create a different reality.

Maybe Dagna could make one for you to try out.  It would be interesting experiment.  No?  Okay.

Time travel only existed in my world in stories.  People theorized it could be possible, but it was deep in the realm of the unknown, and many imagined it could have disastrous consequences.  Tear the fabric of time and space.

And with the things I've seen here... actual holes in dimensional space... time tortured and ruined by evil... I suppose I'm glad now that time travel hadn't been successful.  Who knows what it would it could do to the world?

Back then, though, I was ready to try it.  Eager.  Some part of me agreed that it was insane—but I tuned that part out.  Obviously I was good at tuning out the sensible parts of my brain.  I needed to try.  And if I failed, if nothing happened, I would feel foolish for a while, and eventually find something else to fill the void in my life.  You see, I didn't have anything to lose.

I would supply myself with the proper tools in the physical world, so that in the time-travel-dream-state I wouldn't stand out too much, and I'd have anything I might need.  Why did I think what I had in the real world would translate to the dream?  I don't know, I was guessing.  It made a weird kind of sense.  This was uncharted territory, for me.

I would go to sleep in the right clothes—a long wool overdress in forest green that belted at the waist with an embroidered cord, a deep purple-red shawl to cover my hair and warm my shoulders, cowhide boots lined with fur, and several dozen underlayers to keep me warm.

It felt too conspicuous to wear anything valuable, but I did carry a satchel, and in it, some gold pieces of jewelry and trinkets, some in silver, and gemstones, both loose and set in ornaments.  I didn't know how long I would be there—would one dream-trip be only a few moments, or a few months?  Just in case, I thought I should be prepared to trade.  I also had medicines and bandages, corked in glass and wrapped in linens, like an ancient first aid kit.  Just in case.

I set up my homemade dream machine beside my bed and turned it on.  Oh, I made my own because real ones cost way too much.  And the people who sold them were _so_ weird.  I know, like I'm not?  Sorry, beat you to it. 

I put on some music designed to enhance lucid dreaming, filled with subliminal beats and sound waves. I... indulged in a few mind-altering substances.  Hey, I figured I'd need all the help I could get.  Then I lay in my bed and closed my eyes.

And I focused.  Focused my mind, my will on the goal: getting to a specific point and place in the past.  So many years in the past, so many miles from my bed.  I would get there.  I would see, feel, smell, _live_ in the past, for a little while.  By the time I woke up, I would have the knowledge I thought I needed.  If it wasn't too terrifying, I could try it again.  Maybe make it my regular Saturday night time-travel thing.  I was very wrong about that.

The music thrummed around me, strange swirls and whispers drifted around the low beats, so far in the background I could hardly hear them.  The light beyond my closed eyes flashed and faded at a steady pace.  I could hear the paper of the dream machine knock against the turntable each time it spun:  _thump, thump, thump._

The _thump_ and the music set a slow beat that my heart began to match, slowing, calming.  My hands and feet felt like lead, and I let them sink into the bed.  My body relaxed.

At the same time, my mind began to speed up.  The light seemed to flicker faster.  The _thump_  thumped more frequently.  I had a sensation that the room was melting around me.  The bed and I were sinking together through the floor.

I had imagined it might feel like floating away from my body, becoming lighter than myself.  Instead it was falling, it was becoming too heavy, it was sinking into a black emptiness.

Then the bed disappeared from beneath me.  I was still falling, still slowly, but I never seemed to stop.  I floated down a hole with no end.  My throat closed in fear, and I was completely, terrifyingly awake.

If I say it was kind of like _Alice in Wonderland_ , that would sound so cliché.  At least to me, it would—you don't know what that is.  But it's surprisingly accurate.  Maybe Lewis Carroll tried this too?  I wonder.  Though instead of passing cupboards and marmalade jars as I fell, I saw and felt nothing.  Just the heavy, dark hole of my unconscious brain.

Only then did I start to become afraid that I would be stuck there somehow, trapped in darkness.  Only then did I begin to fear that I had actually lost my mind completely, and I wanted out.

And suddenly I found myself, awake, in another place.  On the ground.  Face down.  In the snow.  

My body burned with pain, as though I had fallen from a great height.  That's what I imagine it feels like, anyway.  Blood pounded in my head, and my vision was cloudy.

Blood.  When I focused my eyes, there was blood on the snow.  And there were screams.

They seemed to be coming from all around me.  Straining, I managed to lift my head, grateful my neck didn't seem to be broken.  People were running, panicked and clumsy.  Others were lying in the snow, like me.  But they didn't move.

The blood on the snow... I didn't know if it was mine.

In the tiny part of my mind that was still rational, I thought, _Okay, this is not what I signed up for. I'd like to go home now._

The world spun around me.  The cold and the screams and the eerie green sky I could barely raise my eyes to see—it was a blur of fear and pain and wrongness.

 _Wake up wake up_ , I told myself.   _WAKE UP._

The spinning stopped and my mind went black.  I don't know how long I was unconscious.

When I woke up again, I was still here.

Huh?  Look, I promise I'll tell you what a microwave burrito is later. Let me get on with my story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like Allison, I've lost it and I don't know what I'm doing, but... enjoy?


	2. Chapter 2

I had no real idea where I was.  Frankly, I still don't.  I don't know what planet we're on.  Some alternate version of Earth, with an extra moon?  Or a far-flung spot out in the universe?  In _another_ universe?  I suppose it doesn't really matter.  Dorian tells me they do star-readings well in Tevinter.  I wonder if they have found other planets, other galaxies.  _(Ed. note - I have no clue what any of this means, and I have a feeling I don't want to)._

The snow was cold, as snow usually is, and I wanted my body to not be on it any longer.  Trouble was, I wasn't sure my body was operable.  As far as I could tell, I had, literally, fallen here.  So I racked my brain for the basic "are you broken" checklist—I wiggled my toes and fingers, worked up to my ankles and wrists, and kept going.  Wiggling, burrowing deeper into the snow.  If anyone had been paying attention, it would have looked quite odd.  Like an arctic seal, but so much less cute.  Luckily for me, everyone was still frantically attempting to escape whatever horrible thing had occurred around us.

That thought made me go even colder with fear.  Why _was_ everyone screaming?  What were they running from?  Should I be running, too, or was it too late?  Funny how one fear can replace another.  Suddenly I wasn't so worried about whether my body could move.  I just moved it.  Turns out my body worked okay.  I rolled over onto my back and lay there, panting, looking up.  Up at the smoke billowing from a nearby fire, and ash floating on the air.  Up at the sky, the horrible green clouds churning, and the... _hole_ in it.

It wouldn't make sense for there to be a hole in the sky and for it to not be the one I fell through.  That would be bad writing, too confusing.  So going by fictional logic, that was my hole.

But was it really there?  Could I have broken the real sky, and made some rip in time that was responsible for all this fear, and blood?  Seemed unlikely.  I just wasn't that special, I was certain of that.

Was it a hole in my brain?  And now I was stuck in some fever dream replication of where I'd intended to go?  Maybe.  If so, I could try to dream my way back.

After I figured out whether I was still dreaming, or I had physically traveled here.  Everything felt so real—but then, it was supposed to, wasn't it?

The people lying in the snow near me, they seemed... dead.  I couldn't really process that.  What I could do was try to stand, and if I wasn't bleeding profusely myself, perhaps I could help someone else.  I still had my satchel, and the things I brought, if they were still intact, could be of some use.  I groaned and struggled to sit up.  My dress and first few layers of underthings were soaked, but it was water, not blood.  The snow had melted beneath me.  I wasn't bleeding.  That was welcome news.

I was in a flat, snowy clearing surrounded by rocky outcrops.  Smoke poured into the clearing, down a well-worn path that led up a hill, down from a ruined building at the top.  Rubble and fire everywhere.  It had very clearly exploded.  Were all these people thrown down from that height when the building blew up?

 _"Un cauchemar..."_   A woman in a white, shapeless gown, her sleeves soaked in blood, slogged through the snow near me, looking toward the smoke. _"Je n'arrive pas à y croire."_

French.  If I had been where—and when—I hoped to be, I should have been hearing Old High German, or at best a very Dutch-inflected Old French.  But there was no guarantee I'd ended up where I planned, and I could muddle through with French.  " _Pardon!_ " I called, waving my arm at her.  " _Pardon, madame!_ "

She wiped at her tear-streaked face and continued on.  My French couldn't be that bad, I'd hardly said a word.  Then I had a panicked thought that perhaps I was invisible.  That I had died and didn't know it.

I crawled to the nearest person, a mass of wet grey wool lying face down in the snow.  Pulling at the sodden clothes, I turned them over.  It was a young woman, younger than I, blonde hair spilling from a red cap, her eyes dreadfully open and unblinking.  She was so cold.  If all of these people in the snow had died, I could have died, too.

 _Study me then, you who shall lovers be_  
_At the next world, that is, at the next spring;_  
_For I am every dead thing_

It’s important and relevant for you to know that in times of crisis my brain spits up scraps of poetry I’ve memorized over the years. I didn’t write that bit myself. That’s relevant, too.

As I sat, half-remembering poetry and stewing in fear of my own mortality, a young man in uniform walked up to me and stopped abruptly.  He seemed surprised to find me, and looked back and forth between myself and the body next to me.  _"Êtes-vous blessé?"_ , he asked, kneeling in the snow beside me.   _"Comprenez-vous?"_

I was so happy he acknowledged me I could have cried. _" Oui,"_ I choked out, _"je parle français."_

His face screwed up in confusion. " _Français?_   Oh, I don't know that word.  Blasted Orlesian," he muttered to himself.  His accent was English, but I couldn't place it.  "Look, you speak Common?"

Now it was my turn to be confused.  "Common?" I asked.  Orlesian, Common...  A fearful knot twisted in my stomach at these words that held no recognition for me.  They were wrong, like the sky.

He scanned the area around us, frustrated.  "Just... stay here," he said as he stood.  "Someone will come along to get you."  He ran up toward the smoking ruin.

I sat, breathed deeply, and appreciated being alive for a moment.  When was the last time I had done that?  My recent years had been nothing but anxiety and escapism.  The days passed and blurred into a mush.  Until now.  This was one of those "scared straight" experiences, I began to think.  My unconscious mind was trying to scare me into appreciating my conscious life.  As relieved as I was to not be dead, as far as I could tell, this wasn't really going to cut it.  Nice try, brain.  I know you and your manipulative ways.

I did as the man said, and stayed there.  But the clearing was quiet.  He didn't want to take responsibility for me, I thought, and left me there to make my own way.

He spoke the truth, though.  Others came rushing toward the clearing.  These people were frantic in a different way—they moved with purpose.  The sun was at their back, and I could hardly see their faces.  They looked unhurt but worried, some armored and uniformed, some in everyday clothes like mine.  _Clothes like mine_ , I realized—rough-hewn tunics, leggings and hide boots.  I caught a flash of sunlight against a filigreed piece of armor, against the glinting edge of a sword.  Maybe I ended up in the right place after all.

Most of them ran past me.  They went to the bodies on the ground and turned them over, pale and motionless.  They ran toward the smoke and ash.  I waited in the snow, but they streamed on by.  I raised my hand shyly.  I thought I deserved some help, too, but I didn't want to make a fuss.

Someone stopped in front of me, a man in armor.  The sun flared around him, his face in shadow.  He bent toward me and grabbed me by the arms, and the shadow faded.  He was scruffy and pale, with thinning blond curls and tired eyes.  He looked like a Golden Retriever.  An important, hardworking one who could use a vacation.

He lifted me to my feet with ease, and he searched my eyes—to see if I had a major head injury, I suppose.  He seemed to determine I did not, though I wasn't so sure.  His eyes were ringed with bruise-dark circles, and I noticed his lips were dry.  He was handsome, all the same.  I leaned my weight against his hands and tried to stand up straight, my feet shuffling in the melted snow beneath me.  "Do you think you can walk?" he asked.

I had no idea, but I thought so.  "I think so," I said.

"Good.  Walk down to the village and help the other survivors."  He let go of my arms, and trudged away.  All business, then.

Standing afforded me a view of what was below us.  Now I could see I was on a plateau, somewhere on a mountain.  There were bridges below, and beyond that a tiny stone village in the snow-strewn valley.

At least I saw them for a moment.  When I took a step, my knees buckled and I flopped onto my side in the snow.  I had thought wrong. I decided to stay on the ground for a while.

***

After another cold rest in the snow, I managed to get myself partway down the mountain, and stay on my feet.  Someone was carting bodies down in a wagon, and offered me a ride.  Since I had been among the dead all morning, it only bothered me _a whole lot_ to ride beside them, piled up, cold and unmoving.  But I did it. There were other survivors, though none who had actually been in the Temple, as I learned it was.  We were far outnumbered by the dead.

The cart with the bodies stayed near the bridge and I walked on to the village.  I had no concept of the landscape around me.  A craggy mountain range, with frozen lakes and pines—I could have been any number of places.  The valley was hardly any warmer than the mountain had been, and I wrapped myself tightly in my wet shawl.

Inside the village walls, they'd set up an aid station of sorts.  The injured were lying near a campfire, and there were others there attending to them, tying wounds and cleaning blood.  I asked one if I could help, and she nodded toward a supply chest. 

Aside from some bandages that were in no fit state to be used, I recognized nothing in the chest.  Red-gold shimmering liquid in tubes, frothy green stuff in jars.  It seemed like dream-nonsense was creeping into my lucid dream.  The green hole in the sky, these things that looked like magic potions...  None of this was historically accurate.  I avoided the potions for fear of poisoning someone, or myself, and snuck the medicines and bandages I had out of my satchel.

The others and I worked there without speaking, in the relative quiet of the village.  Occasionally someone would burst into tears, or a cry for help would come from down the path to the village gate.  One of the others finally broke the silence.  "Why are there no mages here to help?" she asked, and threw her cloth to the ground.

"You _know_ why," another answered in a low voice, without stopping his work.

"These people could be up and about already."  She stood up abruptly.  "I'm going to find one."  And she stalked off, deeper into the village.  _A mage_ , she said.  Perhaps she meant an educated healer, a man of science.  Surely that was what she meant.

The other makeshift nurse looked at me and shrugged.  I shrugged back, hoping that was the response he wanted.

Soon enough, the woman returned, dragging with her a worried-looking man with a terrible bowl haircut.  That, at least, was historically accurate.  But then he approached a woman with terrible gashes on her arms, and laid his hands up on her.  A light came out of the hands, a glowing, bending light.  Like magic.  The hands shook, and the light faded.  The woman's injuries were gone, fresh pink skin where her cuts had been.

That's when I started to feel dizzy.  I backed away, into the busy village path, backed directly into someone sprinting past.  We crashed, and fell, and my satchel opened.  The jewelry and trinkets I had brought spilled to the ground.  I hurried to stuff them back inside, when the person I ran into grabbed my arm.  It was the young man who found me on the mountain, the one who told me to wait.  He was not kind anymore.

Dreams can be strange.  I could understand if the strangeness of a normal dream was melting into my lucid dream, my time-travel dream.  The problem with my lucid time-travel dream, though?  I wasn't controlling any of it.  I would have dried my clothes.  I would have simply made everyone un-injured with my dream-power, not healed with that terrifying magic.  I would have stopped myself from being arrested.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poem quote is from "A Nocturnal Upon St. Lucy's Day" by Donne.


	3. Chapter 3

There must be something about being trapped in a room, stared down by someone suspicious of you.  Someone in authority.  Something happened, and my mind simply wouldn't focus on the situation at hand.  Apparently even when my life might have been in danger.  You see, there was a terrible pain in my head, which took precedence.  Also I didn't believe any of this was real.

A serious redhead in a dark leather hood was the one staring me down.  Her face, though objectively pleasing, showed no emotion, only a scientific curiosity.  She held her hands behind her back and looked over my soggy dress, my ruined braid, my face numb from cold.  My ass was numb, too, from sitting on the damp stone floor, but I couldn't do much about it.  The chains on my shackles weren't long enough for me to stand up. 

The man who found me on the mountain, the one who arrested me, held my satchel close in his gloved hands, as though I might snatch it and run at any moment.  His sharp, nervous eyes shifted between the redhead and me.  He waited for the woman to say something, but she was silent.

_(Ed. note: You wouldn't have known it then, but the fact that she let you live long enough to look you over was a good sign for your future.)_

I'd never been arrested before, but this felt kind of like church, or school.  Stuck in one place, at someone else's mercy for time, or leniency, or salvation.  Waiting.  Not caring.  I rubbed my throbbing temples as best I could while shackled.

"I am wondering why you are really here."  Her voice was sweet, a lilting French-accented English.  She folded her hands calmly in front of her, while the man behind her stepped closer.

"She is a thief!"  He opened my satchel and lifted out the jewelry and trinkets I'd meant to trade.  He tossed them in a shiny pile onto a table lit by runny, yellow candles.  "Robbing corpses, for Maker's sake," he spat.  "With the Divine dead in the temple.  Would you have stolen from her, too?"

"Oh, please don't get sanctimonious, Jerome."  She didn't even look at him while he fumed at me.

All I could think about was how long I might have been there.  Hours?  A day yet?  I had no clue how long I had been unconscious in the snow on that mountain.  Judging by the stiffness and coldness of my body, and the less-alive bodies around me, it must have been a while.  I'd dreamed my way here in the evening, about five-thirty p.m. my time.  If I had been here nearly a day, that meant it was afternoon again for my body.

And _that_ meant I had not had coffee for over twenty-four hours.

Which, more than the fall or the cold, explained the piercing pain in my skull.

"Sister, this is a terrible crime.  We cannot allow law and order to fall apart, even now."  This Jerome had quickly gone from being the most helpful person I'd encountered to one who wanted me locked in a dungeon.  He was no longer my favorite.  The handsome man who helped me up was now my favorite, even though he let me fall into the snow.

He would continue to be my favorite for a long time, but I didn't know that then.  
  
The woman picked through the jewelry with obvious distaste.  "Did you actually see her stealing from the bodies?"

Jerome huffed.  "I found her among a group of dead Orlesian nobles, the only one alive.  The bodies had been... moved.  Later I run into her again, literally, with a bag full of gold.  Sister, the truth isn't hard to see."

She finally turned away from me.  "The problem," she said, "is that all this jewelry is trash.  What self-respecting Orlesian noble would be caught dead with this?"  She lifted a necklace I'd found at a flea market.  It was a thick gold rope chain, and hanging from that was a large gold-plated duck with pink rhinestone eyes.  It was, in fact, hideous.

What can I say?  I had hoped there was no accounting for taste in 8th century Europe.

Despite the hopes I'd had for my lucid travel, so many things didn't feel quite real.  Being arrested, for example.  This jewelry interrogation.  It was surreal.  Like a dream.

But that caffeine withdrawal headache?  It was real.  And it frightened me.  I should have been able to make it go away.  Like the pain in my bones and the numbness in my ass.  No matter how hard I concentrated, I couldn't change a thing.

Just like it had when I fell through the hole, panic gripped me.  Had I lost my mind?  Or had I screwed everything up?  What I could surmise was that I had ended up somewhere strange, a place and time I'd never intended to visit.  And that what was happening around me seemed very, very real.

The woman turned back to me.  "Who are you?"

Before I had embarked on this idiotic plan—and yes, I can now admit it was idiotic, although I can't complain too much about how it worked out in the end—I had an answer ready for that question.  I figured it was inevitable, that someone would want to know who I was, where I came from, and what I was doing.

All those answers I'd filed away vanished from my mind under this woman's scrutiny.

"I... don't know," I managed to say.  Or squeak, to be perfectly honest.

She raised an eyebrow.  "You don't know?"

Did I think that was a safe answer, or better than making something up in a place where nothing made sense?  No, I just learned at that moment that I sucked at thinking on my feet.  I grew better at that later on.

I shook my head.  Jerome sputtered.  "She is lying, Sister Leliana."

Leliana motioned for him to be quiet.  "Do you remember what happened?  Anything?"

"I..."  My mental scrambling for something to say must have been so obviously plain on my face.  No wonder Jerome was incensed.  "I think my name is Allison?"  Maker, I was a pathetic liar.

And now I've apparently begun saying "Maker," so it only took a couple of years to sound like I belong here, instead of sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb.  No, I don't know if there is actually a proverb about sore thumbs, it's just a stupid thing to say.  That's nothing new from me.

"Allison."  Leliana paced before me.  Pacing seemed worse than staring.  She knew I was lying.  "You don't recall the explosion?  Or why you were at the Conclave?"

"The Conclave?"  It wasn't a _lie_ , exactly that I didn't remember any of that.  But it certainly wasn't the truth.  "There are a few scraps here and there I can recall," I said, sitting up as straight as I could.  "Falling, and then..."  I tried to look helpless, though it probably wasn't a hard task.  I was a lying, shackled idiot and I couldn't help myself if I tried.  "If there was an explosion, perhaps I hit my head?"  I offered.  "On a tree?  Or something?"

She smiled at me.  I wish I could say it was comforting.  "It is possible."

Jerome looked me over as Leliana had done before, and his face softened.  Was there, perhaps, a glimmer of sympathy there?  Had he thought better of me, come to the conclusion that maybe I was not a corpse-robber?  "Sister, you cannot be serious."  No sympathy.

"Do you know what I think?"  Leliana stopped her pacing just in front of me, the toe of her high boot at the ring that locked my chains to a flagstone.  "I think you _are_ a thief."

I sank somehow further to the floor.  I wanted to beg and plead that I was _not a thief, please believe me_.  But how would I have known that I wasn't a thief, if I couldn't remember anything?  That would be quite the character inconsistency.

Something clicked in me.  I had to treat myself like a fictional character.  Get my story right, make myself fit a fictional pattern.  I couldn't tell the truth, and if I'd forgotten what my original fake identity was, I could assume a new one.  I was not Allison Alesbrook, writer and recluse and implementer of bad ideas from the safety of my bedroom, any longer.  I was Allison, who had amnesia and was chained to the floor.

I had to make a bold move.  "Perhaps I was," I said.  "I cannot tell you otherwise.  Because I don't remember."

Leliana nodded.  "I think you traveled from Orlais to here, as a bard, perhaps, or posing as a penitent.  You pickpocketed the nobles on your caravan.  Nobles with quite poor taste."  She glanced at the pile of gold.  "Strange idea, working the Conclave.  Blasphemous, really."

Jerome folded his arms and smiled, smug and satisfied.

"But," she said, "considering everything else we are dealing with..."  Leliana sighed, and the weight of the death and destruction I'd seen came back to me.  It had been easier to hope it was not real.  I'm sure everyone felt that way.  "You have not truly hurt anyone.  And thievery is a skill that could be useful to us.  If you can recall how to do it, that is."  
  
_Of harmes two, the lesse is for to chese._   Stealing was better than murder.  Lying was better than stealing.  I was not sure I could hold any moral high ground there, but I would take it if offered.

"Where is Commander Cullen?"  She turned to Jerome, his mouth a tight line.

"He is on the mountain," he muttered, "where they still fight under the Breach."

"And where you should be, instead of bringing this to me.  You are under his command, yes?"  I could almost hear her eyes narrow at him.  "We have no time for arrests.  And I have no patience for it.  You are lucky I was here, waiting for the suspect to awaken.  You both are," she said, glancing at me.  "You would not want to deal with Cassandra at the moment."

I was happy to take her word for it.  _(Ed. note: In my experience, that's a wise choice.)_

"Unlock her," she ordered.  Jerome hesitated only a moment before he knelt to open the shackles at my wrists.  "Give her back her things—except those."  She pointed to the pile of jewelry.  "Surely someone will pay for them.  Though not much."

Jerome leaned forward as he unlocked the iron clasps.  "You _are_ lucky," he said, low and surly.  "I will be keeping an eye on you.  Don't doubt it."

I did not doubt that, but I did doubt how much authority he could exercise over me, or anyone.  He was an underling who wanted to be an overling.  And he had already failed at one effort to rise in stature, using me.  I guessed at all this, anyway—that's how I would have written him.

Sometimes I wonder if being a writer makes me a better judge of character, or just a presumptuous bitch.  _(Ed. note: Now you've got me thinking.  Shit.)_   Well, he _had_ accused me of robbing corpses.  I'm allowed some bitterness.

They let me go.  Jerome stormed off as I gathered myself and my meager, wet things, but Leliana stayed behind.  "As I said before, you may be useful.  Lying is also a valuable skill.  If you... remember anything else," she said, "let me know."  She swept into the shadows and softly closed the door behind her.

This Leliana was offering me help, but she thought I was some kind of bumbling, tacky thief.  Bumbling and tacky I might have been, but I was no thief.  If she was some kind of crime boss, and wanted me to steal for her, she would be sorely disappointed.  I made my way through the gloomy stone building, and stepped out into the cold, shielding my eyes from the bright winter sun.

 _Wynter wakeneth al my care,_  
_Nou this leves waxeth bare;_  
_Ofte I sike ant mourne sare_  
_When hit cometh in my thoht_  
_Of this worldes joie, hou hit goth al to noht._

_For y not whider y shal, ne hou longe her duelle._

I was still too frightened of what I saw, or thought I saw, to venture back to the aid station, so I found an empty log by a fire and sat.  I suppose I _was_ lucky, because I met an extremely handsome and witty dwarf there.   _(Ed. note: And I didn't even pay her much to say that.)_

Obviously I'm not going to recall all of our conversation then because, you know, you were there.  But you said something very important to me then.  You told me you were a writer.

And you were talking about what was happening around us—the explosion, the war, Templars, mages, all the things I didn't understand... you talked about them as though they were a story you were telling.  Protagonists, character development, subplots.  You made it sound as though everything was fiction.

Yes, I was and am quite aware that you were speaking metaphorically, thank you.  Let me make my point.

It was the same thing I thought when I was shackled, and hopeless.  I was only a character here.  Whether I was still dreaming, though a little less than lucidly, or I had somehow bonked my head and now resided in a fantasy-land constructed from the deepest recesses of my mind, or I had punched a hole in dimensional space and visited a heretofore unknown world... I could make my way as someone else, a different not-me.  I could play a role, while I figured things out.  And found a way back to my real life.

You know, that last idea, the dimensional-space-hole one?  I didn't think that was what was going on, at all.  It sounded ridiculous to me.  I just put it on the table as an outlier, a non-option.  Like, if that one was a _definite_ no, then I could sort between the other two and maybe get somewhere.  Shows what I know.

It also struck me, since the big realizations seemed to be coming down in droves, that perhaps my life back home might have been more fulfilling had I treated my life like it was my own story.  If I had focused less on the fiction I was writing, and more on creating an entertaining story to live in.

But perhaps it wasn't too late to write myself a good time.

Of course, being me, I had to think about it for a while.  I'm not a diver-inner by nature.  I put a toe in the water, and then maybe another toe.  By the time I get a foot in, everyone else is done swimming.

So I waited.  I went back to aid the survivors, and later the refugees, and eventually got used to the idea of magic.  I worked at the tavern, for food and a place to sleep.

I needed coffee.  Badly.  All the elfroot tea in the world wouldn't help.

I told everyone that I remembered nothing before the Conclave.

And, in the background, with scraps and whatever I could find, I tried to build another dream machine.  I thought that if I couldn't dream my way back by willing it, the machine could help.  It sent me here, it could send me back.  
  
It was an idea that was great in my head.  In practice, it was a mess of burned parchment and lumpy rocks.  Listen, you don't want to hear about my mechanical failures.  Let's just say I'm no Bianca, all right?

_(Ed. note: I'll be using my editorial privileges to cut that line in case this is ever actually printed.)_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Middle English quotes... a line from Troilus and Criseyde, and a chunk of an anonymous poem:
> 
> Winter wakens all my care,  
> Now these leaves wax bare;  
> Often I sigh and mourn sore  
> When it comes to my thought  
> Of this world's joy, how it goes to naught.
> 
> For I know not whither I shall, nor how long here dwell.


End file.
